Video: Obama explains timing of birth-cert release

posted at 10:50 am on April 27, 2011 by Ed Morrissey

Via Tommy Christopher at Mediate, be prepared to see Barack Obama the happiest he’s been in public in a long while, perhaps since taking office. And why not? In one fell swoop, Obama gets to paint his opponents as nutcases, tweak the press for their sudden obsession over the circumstances of his birth while we move from one government-shutdown deadline to the next, and act like the grown-up in the room. Obama starts off by saying that he finally got some live network coverage the only way he knew how, and proceeds to scold everyone for the monumental waste of time and distraction this has always represented:

Hey, if you finally got to spring a political trap after waiting for more than two years for the opportunity, you’d be all smiles, too.

Truly, the only reason I can think that the White House acted now rather than next year when the announcement would have had more impact is what Obama says here — he doesn’t think his position on the budget has been adequately covered and he’s losing ground because of it. In that sense, Obama should be careful what he wishes for, because if yesterday’s Gallup poll is any indication, he should have been happier with the distraction.

Update: Commenter Cynthia Munford asks:

[D]o you really think that this trap or stunt has enough legs to change the subject of our burgeoning financial problems for long? I would think that every time someone fills (or attempts to) their gas tank, the birth certificate issue flies right out the window/wallet. So I have no problem with The Won enjoying this moment, I don’t think he is going to have very many reasons to smile in the future.

No, I don’t think it will do much, because I think most people didn’t care about this “issue” anyway. I think the White House thinks it will, or perhaps they took a look at the polling with the debt-limit debate upcoming and felt they needed the boost this might give them now rather than later. It won’t last long enough even if he does get a bump from it, however.

Blowback

Note from Hot Air management: This section is for comments from Hot Air's community of registered readers. Please don't assume that Hot Air management agrees with or otherwise endorses any particular comment just because we let it stand. A reminder: Anyone who fails to comply with our terms of use may lose their posting privilege.

Comments

I do think Obama is really trying to satisfy the public’s concerns. I think the problem is with Hawaii Health and Human Services Department. Today they are using a computer to generate copies of Birth Certificates not just the live birth certificate but also the long form birth certificate? Seems to me they are collecting the data from his original the one that was generated at his birth, and plugging it into their computer software program – this would explain the difference today between black and white copy back in the day, and green backed copy generated today.

If the original birth certificate is in a bound book or on micro film it’s easy enough to copy the original unless Hawaii Health and Human Resource Dept., is so freakin incompetent they can’t go locate the archival material and copy it. Remember these are government bureaucrats.

Hammer away, Mr. Trump, hammer away.
Beat the drum to make Obama answer the questions we all want answered.

Afraid some people here do not get the big picture implications of all this.
This subject is off the table for the Democrats and media – they loved talking about Obama’s birth certificate. This was the only thing they were pushing….because they do not want to talk about how bad everything is and it is going to get worse.
This is good for people against Obama.

I don’t see how showing the Long Form BC now gives OZero a boost. He’s the one who spent close to 2 milion dollars fighting it’s production… He’s the one who dragged this out for 3 years so he’s the one everyone is going to be annoyed with for the colossal waste of time.

Now isn’t Bernanke supposed to give some big important speech on our economic situation today?

I am a genealogist, I have ordered two copies of records from Hawaii myself. A marriage and death certificate. They are both generated onto Green Backed Paper and have the seal – like the President’s long form birth certificate, so he must have ordered a copy of his long form BC recently. If someone had copied his long form birth certificate say in 1961 they probably would have gotten the black and white copy that was being issued at the time. I ordered my copies in the last 10 years so this is the format Hawaii Health and Human Resources is using. My question is did someone white wash his birth certificate with his father’s race designation? Was African being used as a race identifier in Hawaii in 1961?

Hawaii can’t leap over it’s own bureaucratic protocols – it can only issue birth certificates that have been computer generated? That’s what I am taking away form this long drawn out melodrama.

I’ve been agnostic on this whole issue, but I have to say, in looking at the PDF presented as evidence, it does strike me as very odd that the horizontal green lines in the background pattern of the certificate don’t curve at the left (bound) edge of the page, unlike the horizontal black lines that define the text fields.

That Obama’s a passive aggressive who takes delight in stirring the pot ? That’s not a leader. That’s a selfish, borderline sadist. This whole issue, and the way it was handled by Obama, does far more to make Obama look small than it does to make “birthers” look nuts.

From a different perspective: Obama says that this birther talk “had become a distraction…” Well, perhaps you should have thought about that before flying to Hawaii a month before the election to seal your records in the first place. You reap what you sow, Mr. President.

And let us not forget that Hillary is the person that started this mess, not us crazy tea baggers.

As the hapless Knotts character is fearfully stumbling about the old house, he is suddenly horrified by some object as lightning illuminates it and thunder shocks his brain. But in the calm following, he observes that the object is nothing remarkable — just a friendly everyday kind of thing.

He smiles.

The smile quickly disappears as he remembers that he’s in a haunted house–something he’d almost forgotten in his moment of relief. Now he’s back to where he was a moment before the smile.

Same thing here. For a moment Obama smiles as this one bogeyman is reduced to nothing — but shortly he’ll be back to fear and loathing with the budget mess (and other messes) all around him.

I’ve never known what to call this phenomenon, other than the “Don Knotts moment.” And just now, for some reason, I’m thinking that Don Knotts and our president might have more in common than I supposed when I first thought to jot this note…

That Obama’s a passive aggressive who takes delight in stirring the pot ? That’s not a leader. That’s a selfish, borderline sadist. This whole issue, and the way it was handled by Obama, does far more to make Obama look small than it does to make “birthers” look nuts.

Obama has sprung a trap, all right – on himself! Now that all the denials about how it was impossible to release the cert have been show to be utterly contrived, he can’t use them or anything like them, to stonewall on all the other records that are hidden.

Here is a copy of the Birth Certificate. The mother’s race is listed Caucasian and father’s race is listed African? In 1961 would African be used as a race signifier? Fox example in South Africa there were Caucasian Africans. Africa is a continent not a race. Hawaii was using this race identifier in 1961? It made sense for description of father’s origin. Was this birth certificate white washed? In Hawaii in 1961, I would expect the race identification for Barack H Obama Sr., to be Negro.

Dr Evil on April 27, 2011 at 12:29 PM

Agreed. I don’t have the exact timeline of the politically-correct at-the-time term for what we now call ‘Black’, but I don’t think ‘African’ would have been used.

As for the “African” race designation, it makes perfect sense. Being from Hawaii I did not even see my first black person until 1958. I imagine the nurse simply asked Anne what she would like in that box.

pat on April 27, 2011 at 12:57 PM

And being a typical lefty America-hater she naturally said ‘African’? Maybe.

The father wasn’t around at the time, and if he was born in a hospital the attendants might have been surprised at what popped out. As a baby, born in Hawaii, looking the way he did they might have assumed he was part-Hawaiian.

At the time, I believe the term ‘mulatto’ was still in use. Perhaps that’s what little Bammie wanted excised.

Barack H Obama Sr father’s race is African, but Stanley Ann Dunham mother’s race is listed Caucasian. This is inconsistent. If African was being accepted as a “Race” in 1961 Hawaii, than Stanley Ann Dunham’s race, should have been listed as American, that would make this form consistent. If I was filling out the form back in 1961 as a government worker, I would have had a few governmental race designations to pick from. Continent of origin for father’s race? It already listed his origin as Kenyan so why didn’t they use that for his race?

I imagine the nurse simply asked Anne what she would like in that box.

pat on April 27, 2011 at 12:57 PM

The birth certificate stated that the father was born in Kenya. That being the case it is more likely that the box for race would have been filled in Kenyan or British.

From a death certificate and marriage certificate I have copies of from Hawaii. The people are listed as Korean for race NOT Asian not Oriental not Pacific Islander. It’s filled out specifically for their country of origin, not the region they were from.

I’m neither a “political pundit” nor a “birther”, but if any single American citizen can put the President on the defensive, it does make the President look weak, and certainly not the “winner”. Trump also put the mainstream media on the defensive for not having vetted this earlier.

If Trump’s goal was to put Obama on the defensive, he succeeded. Keep in mind – though Trump has been grilled by Pravda wannabees – he certainly doesn’t have thin skin.

Once again, be it Palin, Limbaugh, or Trump – though ynone of them may run for President – forces Obama to address an issue that he clearly didn’t want to address.

Now is the time for the political opposition to start ramping up the criticism that is only now starting to make it into the mainstream media – about the economy & foreign policy.

How silly will Obama or the media in the debates if it was they, rather than the Republican opponent, wanted to bring up the, “Well, he/she questioned my country of origin…” defense in response to criticisms regarding entitlements, debt, poor economic performance, corruption, and pathetic foreign policy?

Obama let loose his “bomb” a year too early… and it sounded no better than whistling with crackers in his mouth.

I’ve been agnostic on this whole issue, but I have to say, in looking at the PDF presented as evidence, it does strike me as very odd that the horizontal green lines in the background pattern of the certificate don’t curve at the left (bound) edge of the page, unlike the horizontal black lines that define the text fields.

This seems fishy to me.

Solly on April 27, 2011 at 1:16 PM

Isn’t that curious?

Another curious thing about the Department of Health Number in the upper-right corner of the PDF. The number is 61 10641 — the final numeral “1″ has a pronounced anti-aliased appearance to it, with artifacts you would see in a JPEG. The rest of the data is bitmapped with rather sharp edges, not anti-aliased. The content is very sharp against a very soft background. This document appears to have been “touched up” in some spots.

The date in block #20 is green with a final digit that is black. And there is a color shift in 17a, too. Wonder why?

It also appears to me that the curved edge of the paper at left is too wide for the opening it apparently creates at the perforation. Curiouser.

And, most curious of all, why would he spend a fortune to conceal it when there was nothing to conceal? His draft registration is a forgery. Why wouldn’t this be one, too?

What’s the big secret with Obama’s grades? I thought Hope and Change went along with full disclosure.

Really Right on April 27, 2011 at 2:37 PM

I think the reason they are sealed has to do more with his writings not the grades he received. Barack Obama won hte Democrat primary by running to the left of Hillary. Remember what Hillary wrote her thesis on?

What’s the big secret with Obama’s grades? I thought Hope and Change went along with full disclosure.

Really Right on April 27, 2011 at 2:37 PM

Why would he conceal his grades? Wikipedia states that he graduated magna cum laude from Harvard. His supporters claim he is some kind of genius. Odd that a narcissist like Obama wouldn’t be trumpeting that at every opportunity.

And then there’s the question of who paid for his education, and whether he got financial aid as a foreign student.

Obama is smiling because he’s waited 2 1/2 years to spring this political trap on….. Trump? Pfffft. The air just went out of his balloon. No offense, Ed, but Trump won this ‘fight’. Obama looks stupid for not releasing the bc in the begining. It hurts only Trump, if anyone, since everyone knows Trump isn’t a ‘real’ Republican. Obama’s platitudes about addressing important issues, carnival barkers, etc ring hollow except with the bubble elitists, and anti-birthers. Trump, a private citizen made the most powerful man in the world, jump to his tune. The most ironic thing about this is that it was Obama’s pals in the MSM who kept reporting on Trump’s questions about the bc (and many conservatives who kept commenting on the kerfuffle) that drove public curiosity, which drove the polls, which forced Obama to attempt damage control by springing his trap. Trump may be the carnival barker, but Obama is the carnival clown.

By the way, it also appears that Donald Trump succeeded in getting little Bammie out of bed early this morning. That would explain some of the irritability that he showed in his quickie press conference.

I thought he seemed irritated too, but I just shrugged it off as wishful thinking on my part. I’m glad you thought so and commented on it. Funny how he didn’t waste any time ending the presser. Was he in a hurry to end the humiliation of being bested by the barker, or was it just me? LOL